RM - Killer Torpedo

Once again, JW has returned to Central (& South) America. This time, though, he wasn't chasing a catfish or a piranha, this time he was chasing something else.

Let's be honest here. "Killer Torpedo" was a typical RM episode: it focused on JW and his fishing - this made it different from, say, "Atomic Assassin", where JW talked more about Chernobyl and its effect on the wild life than about fish. No conflict of interest here, it is fish ahoy all the way.

But there are similarities to "Atomic Assassin" as well - namely the decrease of the folk/folklore element in the ep. In previous seasons, JW often approached local holy men or shamans or similar people for spiritual guidance in order to catch this fish, and he usually talked about the local fish- or water-related legends as well. Here, in "Killer Torpedo", this didn't happen - almost.

Yes, JW mentioned that the locals talked about some sort of a local 'mermaid' that may drag anglers to their doom, but it was very brief, and he practically didn't develop this angle at all. Moreover, instead of a shaman, he talked to a local professional angler (White Boy) and received advice that was much more practical than spiritual. This indicates a clear break from the previous seasons and shows that the S5 of RM will definitely be different from the previous ones. Not better or worse, but different.

The other difference in "Killer Torpedo" is the use of flashbacks...or not. It is the "Columbian Slasher" episode that had an overwhelming amount of flashbacks; this one - not so much. What it had an overwhelming amount of were...the black vultures, birds similar to the turkey vulture, but more drab in color. WTF? Basically every 10-15 minutes the episode produced one or more black vultures doing something that was completely irrelevant to the show. Were they supposed to serve as ethnic color for the episode? I honestly don't know.

But black vultures aside, "Killer Torpedo" was still an impressive episode, centered on JW's struggle with the fish - the Atlantic tarpon in this case. It was a straightforward struggle of man vs. giant fish and JW delivered by catching his fish. Too simple? Perhaps, but RM is a fishing show and catching fish is what it is about. By catching his fish (the tarpon in this case) JW has fulfilled the premise of this episode, as he usually done. My respect goes out to him as usual too.

So: a straightforward fish-catching episode that nevertheless indicates a break with the tradition established in the previous seasons. I give it four out of five stars.

RM - Atomic Assassin

This week River Monsters presented "Atomic Assassin", where JW went to Chernobyl to catch a giant mutant fish known as {som}, only to discover that it was his old friend the wels catfish... but it isn't that simple.

For a start, I believe that RM and JW had to do some re-writing of the episode's script: the first 5-10 minutes or so appeared to follow JW's usual monster-hunting schitck that included going into the local folklore (this time, the Ukrainian/Slavic folklore) to find more info about the monster and to get some sort of a spiritual (real or not) guidance to catch it. Not this time, though - this time the folklore angle had been completely abandoned. Why? Because of Chernobyl.

I do not want to discuss as to whether or not Chernobyl was the worst nuclear disaster ever - the States had their own problems with Long Island, and Japan's disaster in the 21st century was at least as bad Chernobyl. Period. That said, the report that JW - intentionally or not - has presented via AA was very impressive, many media sources, both Russian/Ukrainian and Western seem to believe that the life in the locale of Chernobyl explosion is recovering from the blast - JW showed that that wasn't the case both with fish and with a bird (I believe that it was a so-called marsh tit). I, for one, certainly didn't know that wildlife was struggling so badly in the locale of the explosion, you know?..

On the other hand, I have to confess that the fish caught by JW, starting with the pike and perch and ending with the catfish looked certainly hale and hearty enough, if I were to come across them in a fish stall or somewhere else, I certainly wouldn't recognize them as radioactive mutants. On one hand this shows the danger of radiation poisoning: you may not know that you ate contaminated food. On the other, this shows the tenacity of life: the fish may not be flourishing as it may appear at a first glance, but they still survive, they still endure..as do the birds, the plants and other creatures in the locale, as shown by the RM.

Also, on a less serious note, this episode has practically shown all of the large carnivorous fish of Europe, short of the turbot. But the turbot is basically a fresh-water cod and Ukraine is too warm for it. Period. Speaking of fish...

The other main difference between this episode and previous ones, such as "Asian Slayer", when JW went to Asia to catch the Golden Mahseer (another giant catfish) is that JW actually delivered in this episode, he caught his fish. Don't forget - RM is first and foremost a fishing show, and so some fishing, and preferably successful fishing must be seen. When that doesn't happen, the episode is usually a flop, when it does, the episode's a success.

(Another thing that made this episode a success is a small number of flashbacks, unlike the "Colombian Ripper" episode, for example - these flashbacks are only counterproductive and annoying).

The only negative aspect of this episode was the 'som' shtick - it could be spun only so many times before the viewers, even those who didn't know any Russian/Ukrainian at all, realized that it was a wels catfish that JW's interlocutors were talking about, you know? JW didn't need to spend that much time playing his audience. That aside, though, this episode was very enjoyable, for me at least.

So: many interesting facts, both about fish and other topics, a successful fishing excursion and overall a dramatic and exciting ep. I give 4.5 out of 5 stars at least.

RM - Colombian Slasher

And so, RM returned for the 5th season, bringing JW along with it. Yay! (Mind you, it was already around in the States, so here I'm talking only about Canada.) That said, well...

Canada decided to open RM with the episode "Colombian Slasher", as JW tried to solve the mystery of what's behind the drowning of a bride, and while this episode wasn't specifically bad, it was rather lukewarm; it almost had a tired feel behind it, as if JW just couldn't muster excitement behind it. Yes, he wasn't in Columbia before, but the various flashbacks of the other SA fish from the previous seasons took most of the excitement out of the new locale, and there wasn't any particular 'ethnic flavor' behind this episode either. Rather, I was reminded (by the show itself) of such episodes as "Piranha" (about the piranha) and "Amazon Flesheaters" (about various catfish species of the Amazon). Why?

The problem that lies behind that question is that there was no real need to show flashbacks - the viewers either knew already what JW was talking about and didn't need to see the flashbacks, or they didn't, in which case the flashbacks didn't show anything important either; in both cases they were more annoying than helpful.

As for the fish themselves... yes, the various stingrays were cool, but seeing how JW 'reminded' everyone of his previous run-ins with this family ("Silent Assassin" for example) - it took the wind out of everyone's sales, JW's included: he just didn't appear to have any real excitement behind his capture of this episode's Big Fish, but some really good acting. That is a close second, but just isn't the same...

Of course, the problem might be mine, not the episode's - I only saw it in bits and pieces, but what I saw... as I said before, the spark was missing, the 'ethnic flavor' was greatly reduced, and JW appeared to be mostly play-acting for the camera, not the 'real deal' as before. Oh well, maybe he is just having a rocky start and will improve as time goes by. We'll see.

Did you know?

Did you know...?

1) ‘Bella’ is an anagram for ‘label’. Seriously. ‘Label Swann’ – that just sounds really wrong. ‘Mrs. Label Lestrange’ – that is even more wrong.

2) Ditto for ‘Kratos’: it is an anagram of ‘Sokrat’ – Socrates, who was one of the greatest Greek philosophers and a founding father of Western modern philosophy as well. Kratos is a great guy, but a philosopher? I think that he would be first to admit that philosophy is one thing that he isn’t strong at – now if it was head-bashing, then he would be on top of things...

3) If you read the Old Testament part of the Bible, you can see the growth of patriarchy. Abraham might have been a God-fearing man, but he was also totally dominated by his wife, Sarah. The incidents with Hagar and Israel (Genesis 16; 21) are rather unseemly by modern standards, but they also indicate the importance of Sarah in the relationship of Abraham and God: Sarah is not afraid of speak up even to Almighty; the latter has to talk to Abraham in private regarding the sacrifice of Isaac; and Abraham has to trick Isaac (and his mother?) to get Isaac out of the camp and onto the sacrificial mountain – maybe because if Sarah knew about this, she would’ve put her foot down very firmly and the entire Biblical history would need to be re-written from Genesis onwards.

By contrast, in Quran the sacrifice of Israel was done voluntarily – this version of Abraham had no need to trick Hagar and Israel regarding the sacrifice. This was done because the authors of Quran (unlike Genesis) were fully patriarchal and did not need to trick their wives to do what has to be done (at least in theory).

Back to Genesis. There, Abraham sold Sarah several times to various pharaohs and kings, and each time God intervened to ensure that Sarah would return to Abraham via various pestilences and plagues. Clearly, not unlike the pagan deities, God of Abraham (Genesis 11-25) had his favorites among the Jewish women, like Sarah.

It is different with Isaac and Rebekah. It is anyone’s guess what their family life was like, but at the end Rebekah had to trick Isaac into blessing Jacob rather than asking for Divine intervention: the Almighty has already turned away from women and towards men at this point in Biblical history. Rebekah could not apparently directly impose her own will onto Jacob as Sarah did upon Abraham either – either Isaac was made of sterner staff than his father was, or Rebekah lacked some tribal rights or customs that her mother-in-law had, I do not know.

Finally, Jacob has 12 sons, but only one of them from Rachel, the woman he really loved. I am reasonably certain that Rachel also had feelings for Jacob, and also, as the mother of the second-youngest son she cared little for her and Joseph’s rivals, but again, unlike Sarah, she did not do anything – maybe because she could not do anything? In any case, whereas Sarah played a large, active, and directly connected to, role in Abraham’s career, Rachel’s role was much more passive, and she was much more submissive, both to her father and her husband; in fact, she is almost completely defined by her relationship to these men; even her theft of her father’s idols was done only to promote the success of her husband, nothing more – Sarah, for all of her flaws, was a character and a person in her own right, moreso than her daughter- and granddaughter-in-law, it seems.

And as for Joseph’s wife? His wife, Asenath, does not even feature in the Biblical canon; texts such as ‘Joseph and Asenath’ are technically more like first fanfics (Bible-themed) than Biblical canon, so they do not quite count among the religious people.

4) A new season of ‘River Monsters’ in on the way; pity that it does not air in Canada just yet: I cannot wait and see for myself what JW has been up to!

5) Spike site has invented a new trick – episode highlights. Basically, they had full footage of some of the episodes and assembled video clips of the others. So, they took those video clips, and assembled them into single features. Good idea?

Maybe, but the execution of this idea is not that good. You click, for example, onto the highlights of DW episode ‘Aztec Jaguar vs. Zande Warrior’: what you get is a brief promo of the episode in general and a longer clip of the Aztec maquahuitl saw through a gel head of a horse. That is it, seriously. People, come on, I’m sure that there are many DW audience members that would argue that that decapitation isn’t the only video highlight of that episode, now is it?

Or you click for the highlights of a SFD episode ‘Dr. Quarantine’. Here, you get three combined clips of varied length – in reverse. The first clip should have been the last and vice versa, but the video editor of Spike’s site has not done a good job, and so the video highlights were combined in reverse. That is just dumb.

6) Speaking of SFD, (‘Savage Family Diggers’/’American Digger’), what can be said about it? It is just lackluster, though Ric Savage does do his best to liven it up. It is also not staged as some of Spike’s other series (‘World’s Worst Tenants’, ‘Urban Tarzan’), something that I can clearly respect. Of course, I am not sure how the Savage family can make a real living from what they dig-up (a typical payload appears to be somewhere between 1500 to 3500 dollars, it seems – a sum that people can live off, but not particularly well or long), but meh, the head of the family used to be a professional wrestler, he probably got enough money saved up to run this hobby, so kudos to him for that.

Well, that is it for now. See you in May, hopefully.

MLP:FIM & "Lost Girl" - the issue of changing, part 2

And so the 3^rd season of “Lost Girl” came to a close. What can I say about it? It was rushed.

The first two thirds of the 3^rd season (pardon the alliteration) were about Bo digivolving into the next stage of the succubus-hood. Regrettably, all came down to Bo reviving Dyson from the dead, and while I have nothing against the good ship Bo/Dyson, I have to point out that the powers of life and death are not associated with the succubae as a rule. Yes, obviously, Bo was initially made a succubus because her being would be simply cliché, but she could have at least grown wings or a tail or something along those lines.

The make-up budget for the show didn’t allow an extensive amount of prosthetics in the BtVS fashion?  

 Perhaps, but they did not have to be worn for a long amount of time – just long enough to make an impression. Instead, we had Bo appear (in flashes) looking crazy with some sort of a savage hairstyle, clearly implying horns...so there were horns, just really cheap knock-offs.

That said, my main problem is the last third of the plot in the season: out of nowhere the issue of human-Fae interaction finally came ‘online’... and Vex has basically wasted the Morrighan. What a waste. She survived Aoife and the Naga-Garuda feud only to fall to one of her ex-minions. Oh well.

Still, the Morrighan’s fate is just one of the casualties that befell the 3^rd season of “Lost Girl”. The previous seasons were generally wholesome and coherent, while this one appears to be more of two seasons, two plotlines, smashed into one, with only some moderate connections between the two of them – namely, Bo’s father, the Wanderer.

What sort of a Fae is the Wanderer? The Wandering Jew, maybe? Because I seriously doubt that Aoife slept with Carl Wanderer, an infamous American murderer. I mean sure, Aoife can probably sleep with a murderer if she wants to get ahead, she does not shy from killing people herself, but Carl Wanderer was a real-life person, and “Lost Girl” doesn’t mess with the real world all that well.

That said, I am nowhere near certainty regarding the identity (or the species?) of Bo’s dad. At the end of one of the episodes, Mr. Trick (who at the end of S3 went off to Scotland with the blonde Stella-star), looked at a rather Jersey Devil-like image: this was the episode’s heavy hint that Bo was going to meet him in the future – i.e., her dad might be the Jersey Devil or a similar creature...

Yet all of this is besides my point, which is as following: two thirds of the S3 were spent on Bo being forced by an internal reason to evolve, and once she did (and proved it by bringing Dyson back to life), this whole plot just vanished into thin air, leaving Bo in a messed-up relationship with Lauren, and nothing else. That is just wrong and unfair both to Bo and to the audience: if both have spent so much time with Bo’s evolution, then either this sort of an abrupt dismissal does not make sense, or Bo’s evolution was unnecessary, because it can be dismissed so abruptly. Pick your choice, or make your own theory, I am listening.

If Bo’s metamorphoses have amounted to nothing, then so have Twilight Sparkle’s, actually. Firstly, the comics (which take place after MLP: FIM S3) show her as a unicorn, rather than an alicorn. Why? Twilight’s ascension was a big deal, to ignore it in the comics seems wrong, again (as is the case with Bo).

Let me elaborate (hopefully). In MLP, an alicorn is a superior being (towards other ponies), to become an alicorn is essentially is to stop being a pony (regardless of the sub/species) and to become a demigod of some sort. In the show, TS became an alicorn, in the comics she did not. And again, WTF? If her becoming an alicorn is a big deal, then the comics should not ignore this; if it is so easily ignored, then it is not a big deal and should not have been made in the first place: the alicorn princess Trollestia is not canon, TS and her friends did not have to be pranked so nastily.

Unlike “Lost Girl”, though, I have a theory: when TS became an alicorn at the end of S3, this caused a backlash of criticism from the show’s fans, so now, if not Lauren Faust herself, then the other members of the Hasbro team scurry to undo the damage caused by this ep. In particular, they have released information that TS shall not outlive her friends, she is not immortal, she is not really an alicorn – just the same old TS, just with a pair of wings stuck to her sides. Someone, call Celestia – Trollestia has really messed this one up, a millennium up on the moon (or the sun, or a planet) is required to cool her off while the rest of the alicorn family and the Mane 6 undo her damage.

Seriously though: just like Bo, TS has been transformed by external forces outside her (their) control, and after the transformations were complete, neither of them received any benefits from this – on the country, Bo’s transformation has now become obsolete and/or ignored, while TS’s transformation has not done only that, it is in the process of becoming nullified. Why? Why have them go through it if those transformations are not going to stick? I have no idea, but both Hasbro and Showcase™ have let their heroines down, period.

MLP: FIM & "Lost Girl" - the issues of change

Sometime in the past, I got a chance to watch the short version of MLP: FIM the third season, and currently I am feeling more and more confused about this show – what the hay is going on there?

Let me elaborate. All of the main villains on this version of MLP are shapeshifters. I am talking about real villains, not one hit wonders such as Gilda or Flim & Flam (Trixie’s return was just a nod to her popularity among the fans, I reckon), those who usually take two episodes to be dealt with.

Judge for yourself. Nightmare Moon (unlike Princess Luna) seems to be mainly a being of the mist, taking on various guises – an evil alicorn, a thorn in a manticore’s paw, a group of Shadowbolts and so on. Changing shape and appearance was natural to her, but when she was hit by the elements of Harmony and became Princess Luna instead, that was it. Princess Luna she has remained and did not change her appearance once (discounting any possible bloopers made by the show’s illustrators). 

Discord is trickier. In S2 he was basically the same as Nightmare Moon in S1, using his power to change, and not just his own shape, but the reality around to him, save that he worked much more actively against the Mane 6 and was more dangerous. In S3 he supposedly was redeemed, but that episode felt rushed, and so far Discord had not been a big part of the show, so maybe he is bidding his time before doing something that will cause him to be petrified once more, who knows? The important thing is that he apparently cut down on his shapeshifting too now that he is a good guy.  

As a queen of the changelings, Chrysalis is no slouch at changing her appearance, and she has not appeared in S3. Her appearance in the comics (which I have not seen, not really), however is still that of a villain, and not really a sympathetic one, not even by the ponies standards. She has kept her abilities, though.

Finally, S3 had introduced King Sombra, formerly from the Crystal Empire. He too was a shapeshifter, similar to Nightmare Moon rather than to Discord or Chrysalis, appearing sometimes as a unicorn and sometimes as mass of shadows. It is unknown if he kept his shapeshifting powers, but because he has not been redeemed either, my money’s on the positive answer in that regard.

So. When a major villain is redeemed, he or she apparently loses the power to change, especially their shape and appearance. If they keep this power, they remain evil (and unsympathetic) instead. That is one.

And two was the third season’s finale, when Twilight Sparkle accidentally changed her friends’ destinies by transforming their ‘cutie marks’ into different ones, and to her apparent surprise, she found that they sucked in their new roles, all of her friends were “one-trick ponies”, capable of doing only one job really well, and unable to adapt their attitudes or strategies in order to suit their new circumstances, period. Ergo, TS had to put things exactly as they were to make everyone happy again – and then she became an alicorn.

Now, alicorns are immortal, and at least in case of Princess Celestia, they do not change at all. Princess Celestia, in particular, remained as she was for at least 1000 years while her sister was on the moon and Discord was petrified. That said, she was also apparently weaker than Discord was one on one (as she was with Chrysalis, FYI), and she certainly kept away from NM until the latter became Princess Luna once more and thus non-confrontational. Could it be that by making TS into an alicorn, Celestia has made TS weaker, magic-wise? Who knows...?

I know one thing for certain: MLP: FIM makes adaptability and transformation look evil, shows that being a one-trick pony is a good thing and a key to a road for happiness and stability, and has made its leading lady into a being who is immortal and thus cannot change and become a different being, either for better or for worse. I do not know what MLP’s message here is, but I do not think that I like it.

Still, while forced transformations appear to be over for TS (she did not ask to be an alicorn, you know), the heroine from another show, i.e. Bo Jones from “Lost Girl” is not done with them yet. Right now, “Lost Girl” is in its 3^rd season as well, and Bo has ended up in a position where she to change willingly and become a better (more powerful?) Fae or she will transform unwillingly, into some sort of a feral creature called an UnderFae.

Let us be frank here. I like “Lost Girl”, but still think that it has its flaws too: the tendency to lump everything that is not human as Fae (a succubus, for example, is not a faerie, but a demon – a completely different being) is one of them. (Well, except for the Naga and the Garuda from S2, but they are a very different topic.)

Yet I find S3 of “Lost Girl” particularly disappointing. Firstly, it is obvious that by the end of it Bo will break-up with Dr. Lauren (breaking the hearts of half of her fandom in the process) and ship-up with Dyson. Personally, I do not have anything against Dyson, but still, it is only Bo’s species (succubus vs. vampire) that make this something short of a cliché, where the hero gets the girl – this diminishes not just Bo and her relationship with Lauren, but also Dyson as well.

And the diminishment of Dyson has one more dimension, tied to the rest of the S3. In the 2^nd season, “Lost Girl” really began to develop aspects of Dyson’s character, his past, and also - the Celtic elements of the show. “Lost Girl” began to really go somewhere... but now this tendency has been abandoned in favor of the Fae creatures all over the world – Greek Amazons, Hindu Rakshasas, Slavic Poludnicas, and so on, and the same can be said about Dyson’s back story: it has been abandoned as well, a great pity in my opinion.

Therefore, to add injury to insult, on top of those disappointing developments, there is Bo’s forced transformation: no matter what Mr. Trick tells Bo, even if she does evolve into someone more powerful, she will not be her old self anymore – and Bo has accepted that. She does not try to discover anything, any way to get herself out of this mess, she just goes on wherever Mr. Trick leads her, and any arguments between them are basically reduced to childish tantrums on Bo’s part, with everyone involved knowing fully that she will do as asked, she just needs to vent first. That is character diminishment as well as a transformation of Mr. Trick into someone who runs more and more of Bo’s life – probably not a good thing either.

Anyways, before this becomes a full-blown rant (or a criticism) of “Lost Girl”, let me conclude that both it and MLP: FIM seem to have diminished in their 3^rd seasons, the latter by continuing to claim that transformation is bad, stability is good (think Orwell’s sheep), and the former by forcing their main heroine into a no-choice situation and by having her go against everything that she stood for in the process.

River Monsters Coming Back!

And though P:NW has still been cancelled, I have some good news, at least: River Monsters is coming back in April 2013 for a fifth season. That is very cool! Admittedly, this show does aim to entertain and humour and enrapture its audience, but there are some scientific elements present in this show as well, unlike, say, Hillbilly Handfishing (not that I have anything against it, mind). I can hardly wait for RM to re-appear.

And speaking of RM, earlier this week JW has aired several of his ‘specials’ – “Killer Weapons”, “Lethal Legends” and “Deadliest Encounters”, to name a few. In each of those special episodes he provides a medley of his encounters with various fish and other creatures, from New Zealand’s longfin eel to the Japanese giant salamander, to name a few. Each of those encounters had some importance for JW, spiritual or experience-wise or something other. This also shows that this show is maturing into something more than more entertainment, which is good. After all, with so many shows being cancelled, it is nice to see that RM keeps going on. I wish it and JW best of luck in the future.